28 Alice Faber, Marianna Di Paolo, and Catherine T. Best
cannot unmerge. This presumption is only valid for true mergers, not for
near mergers.
Here we have the crux of the matter. It is relatively straightforward to derive
the modern English system in which reÀ exes of ۘ NAME and æj DAY con-
trast with reÀ exes of Ɲ FEED, ܭࡃ HEAP, and ܭࡂ SPEAK without the interme-
diate stage in which ܭࡃ HEAP and ܭࡂ SPEAK had apparently merged with ۘ
NAME or æj DAY, as in (1.3c). However, if the speech form in which NAME
and DAY contrast with FEED, HEAP, and SPEAK is a direct descendant of one
in which HEAP, SPEAK, and NAME and/or DAY were truly merged, there are
severe dif¿ culties. There are several ‘solutions’ in the literature.
The ¿ rst ‘solution’ is to deny the validity of the sources suggesting system
(1.3c) in the precursor of Standard English. This is the ‘solution’ adopted by
Luick (1964), Wolfe (1972), and Cercignani (1981), among others. One prob-
lem with this ‘solution’ is that, while much of the evidence suggesting system
(1.3c) comes from sources that are relatively easy to explain away, John Hart,
generally considered the ‘best’ orthoepist, clearly reports the same vowel in
HEAP and DAY, one that differed from his vowel in NAME (see Wolfe 1972:
35 ff for discussion).
The second ‘solution’ is to assert that the contemporary standard pronun-
ciation of HEAP/SPEAK with /i/ rather than /e/ was borrowed from another
dialect in which system (1.3c) had not occurred because (1.3b) had led to true
merger of ܭࡃ/ܭࡂ HEAP/SPEAK with Ɲ FEED; in such dialects, HEAP/SPEAK
would have raised to /i/ when FEED did, in the 15th century. Dobson (§108)
notes that the dialects most likely to have inÀ uenced the standard, those of
Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, also apparently had (1.3c). If the raised variant
of HEAP/SPEAK was borrowed from any of these dialects to the standard, it
is still necessary to explain how HEAP and NAME diverged in them. Further,
it seems to us unlikely that any source dialect would have had exactly the
same words in the HEAP/SPEAK class as the standard. Whether the dialect
borrowing hypothesis is to be interpreted as borrowing lexical items or as
changing the pronunciation of lexical items under the inÀ uence of the source
dialect, changes in the lexical inventories of the dialects would have led to
a residue of words in the HEAP/SPEAK class with /e/ rather than /i/. Such
a residue clearly exists, in the well known set of ‘exceptions’ great, break,
steak.^11 However, the dialect borrowing hypothesis provides no such handy
account of words from the NAME and DAY classes which surface in the
standard with /i/ rather than /e/. Chief among these are measles, from ME
maseles, with Ɨ , and pleat, a doublet from plait. (Other anomalous outcomes,
like 19th-century raisin with /i/, have been leveled out.)
As a result of dif¿ culties with the dialect borrowing hypothesis, Dobson
(§108) suggests that all words in the HEAP/SPEAK class had variants with